


Post-Script

by arkosic



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 17:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5793703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arkosic/pseuds/arkosic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"On a small rocky outcrop, curtained by stunted trees and stiff grass, they bury CT."</p>
<p>Prompt fic - how did he tell her that CT was the one who had warned Tex?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Post-Script

On a small rocky outcrop, curtained by stunted trees and stiff grass, they bury CT.

Church is quiet, nestled far enough in the back of her mind to pass for a respectful distance; his memory is built of files and folders, and CT’s is a thinner one than most. He doesn’t know to regret a broad plain for a woman who had spoken of skyscraper balconies with wry fondness, or the empty wilderness for eyes that had regarded lunchroom antics with masked curiosity. Carolina rubs her thumb over the steel engraving and reflects that there will at least be stars.

When she takes the edge of her knife to the seam to pry the dog-tag open, however, Church flickers up over her shoulder in an instant, paled to faint outlines by the midday sun. “Whoa! You’re destroying it?”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?” It’s difficult not to bridle at being questioned, years of solitude still heavy in her head, but she manages to keep it more query than warning, and pauses in her dismantling as an additional courtesy. “You took what you needed from it, didn’t you?”

“Well yeah, but…” He hesitates. “I thought maybe you’d want to, you know, see it for yourself someday.”

He means _without me present_ , and that’s unusual enough to stretch her pause longer, but after a moment she shakes her head. “Too much of Freelancer’s information has found its way to the wrong people already; I’m not going to let it happen to CT’s data as well.”

“Recovery 2.0,” he says sardonically. “We’ve recovered it though, haven’t we? I’d like to see someone try to take it now.”

His confidence amuses her. “Just because it’s in your possession doesn’t mean it’s safe.” She doesn’t say _there’s always someone better_ ; she can feel him grow subdued at her memory of red-lit shadows and a swinging axe, and her amusement fades with him. The sweep of her thumb over metal is rougher this time. “It was a miracle Tex didn’t realise what she’d taken.”

Even as she says it, a doubt that is becoming increasingly familiar prickles along the edges of her mind. From pet to rogue seemingly overnight, with Freelancer secrets hung around her neck…

Church’s projection turns hazy around the edges.

“If you have something to say, Church-”

“Tex didn’t take it,” he says abruptly. “In the files, the data…it was _for_ Tex. Just a copy, I mean, CT obviously had other plans as well, but there was a message for Tex in there. She gave it to her.”

The stab of betrayal takes her by surprise, knocking the breath from her lungs and the words from her lips. Betrayal for herself—for a soft smile turned sour, for sarcastic hints that balked at sharing the bald truth, for a last desperate choice that favoured a stranger—and yet betrayal for CT as well. That choice had not halted the axe.

Church is evidently less surprised, because he continues readily with, “Carolina, it wasn’t like-”

“Shut up, Church,” she says harshly, and he lapses into a silence that doesn’t stop faint frustration from simmering along their connection.

The data is still cupped in her hand, knife pressed along its side, and if she were to pull it back now it would be unharmed. She knows the gist of what it holds; the details of Alpha’s injustice, the story of the fragments, the answer to the question that had been unshakeable ever since the little grip at her heart at the sight of the name Texas on the training room board because that had not been a reservation meant to be filled.

Now it seems it holds further secrets than that: the last words of a teammate who had entrusted her mission to her murderer.

“She must have gotten it afterwards,” Church insists. “Tex wouldn’t have- not like that.”

Had CT thought the same? The message would likely tell her; lay bare the nuance in tone that would make it a sincere plea or a firm instruction or a despairing lunge for hope. Carolina has been on Tex’s trail as much as the Director’s, and she could stand to take a guess, but _to be is to be perceived_ and there is no opinion so genuine as one not intended to be heard.

She jerks down on the handle of her knife and the dog-tag casing cracks open, baring the small green square hidden carefully within. The gloves become a little clumsy when handling something so delicate—York had bemoaned them as the cause of more than one infiltration misstep—but she pries the chip free without incident, leaves it sitting in the curve of her palm.

“It wasn’t meant for me.”

Church flickers at her shoulder, little lines of visual static rippling along his image, and then he snorts and the projection shrugs. “Okay, well, if you’re sure. I guess I remember it all anyway. What with that being my job,” and a shade of bitterness edges in at the end.

“I’m sure.” It takes little more than a squeeze to crack the chip, and when she spreads her fingers it tumbles to the dirt in a glittering shower.

They don’t bury CT in the same place as where the chip is destroyed. It just seems wrong, somehow, to leave her amongst the broken remnants of her greatest success. Carolina walks along the edge of the outcropping to where one tree has managed to fight off its competitors to achieve a respectable height, jutting out from the rocks to catch the full light of the sun. She loops the dog-tag’s chain over one of the branches, pulling it back through itself so that it catches in a firm knot.

There are no people out here, no mysteries to pluck at, but she’s seen lizards skitter between rocks and heard birds warble the sun to rest, and maybe CT would have preferred the quiet in the end.

“Church?” She dusts her gloves together and waits for the buzz that is wordless acknowledgement. “Remembering might be your duty, or your responsibility if you want to put it that way, but it’s not your function and it’s not your job.” There is a long pause before the buzz this time, and when it comes, she adds, “Especially since you already have a job. How _are_ those codes coming, by the way?”

His protest is instant, indignant, familiar. “It’s been like an hour! I’d like to see _you_ break triple-encryption in anything less than a day.”

“I don’t need to,” she says, adjusting the set of her pack along her shoulders. “I just delegate it to my assistant.”

“Assistant-? Bullshit! If this is my job then I get to be Manager of Badass Tech Stuff. No, wait, Chief Manager. _Senior_ Chief Manager. And I want a pay rise.”

She can’t quite laugh—not yet—but she feels her lips curl upwards in a smile. “Come on, Church. Let’s get going.”


End file.
